Friday Notes: June 1, 2007

First Anniversary

Melissa and I will share our first anniversary on Sunday. It’s hard to believe we’ve been married a whole year because so many things have happened since June 3, 2006. I became the brother-in-law of a great friend, got my first full-time accounting job, began and quit grad school, had a car mysteriously “stolen” and “found,” bought a house, and got to spend a full year living with my favorite person in the world. I consider myself very fortunate.

The Smoke Beckons Us

If you live in Chattanooga, don’t blame me for the haze, even though I spent last weekend fairly close to the source of the wildfires. Yes, the smoke has remarkably followed us here, casting enough of a haze on the area not to let me use the new sunglasses I bought on Tuesday night. I hope you’ll keep everyone in South Georgia and North Florida in your thoughts, because it’s really tough on a lot of people with respiratory problems, not to mention that the ongoing drought conditions are threatening all kinds of crops. They’ve even issued a health warning here, and we’re hundreds of miles away.

The NBA is now mildly interesting

I’m still not a big NBA fan because of the overall style of play, but you have to admire LeBron James’ performance last night in Game 5 of the Eastern Conference finals. Wasn’t everyone calling this series for the Pistons?

Also, as a sort of casual Magic fan (they’re the team I’ve always played as in NBA video games, dating back to the Shaq and Penny days, if that even means anything), I’m fairly pleased with the Billy Donovan signing. I’m not convinced it was a good decision for him in the long-term (see Pitino, Rick and Calipari, John), and it probably hurts the visibility of SEC basketball, but from the Magic’s perspective, at least he’s better than Brian Hill. I just want to see Dwight Howard become a superstar, and hopefully the front office will put a little talent around him.

So, is my degree really worth anything? I still think so…

The Freakonomics Blog wrote up something interesting about the changes on the horizon for financial reporting. Luckily, this won’t put an end to businesses needing people like myself to interpret the data and keep things running smoothly. It does mean that I might have to adapt a bit to the changing rules and regulations, but pretty much everyone has to deal with that. I think the idea of “putting that accounting class on hold” might be taking it a bit far, at least if they’re trying to discourage future accounting majors. The comments on the post are good, as usual.